Niki was beside the stage, running point on the sound equipment with Matt—who had come back from the bank with burgers and fries from Dick’s. They were still picking at the last of the fries.
They each flashed her a big thumbs-up.
She brought the mic to her mouth and sat up a little straighter. “Good evening, everyone. My name is Leda Foley.” A smattering of applause went around the room. “Some of you have heard of me. Nice.”
From what little she could see past the lights, at least half a dozen faces were familiar, and they’d brought friends. Word must be getting around. Was that a good thing? She couldn’t decide, and it was too late to bail tonight.
“Well, thanks so much for coming out, and thanks of course to Matt Cline for letting me commandeer his stage for a little while. I’ll let this run for an hour or two if I’m feeling it, and cut it short if I’m not. Does that sound fair?”
The crowd murmured in response.
“Good. For all you new folks, here’s the drill: I’m a thirty-two-year-old travel agent, born in Tacoma, Washington—”
Which got a solitary whoop from somewhere toward the back.
She pointed toward the sound. “Tacoma! Represent. Just the one guy, though? No other fugitives from the Tacoma aroma?” That got a few giggles. “We moved when I was about ten years old, but it’ll always be home. I guess. Okay, it’s just us, then. Let’s start with you, shall we? Stand up back there, Mr….?”
“Cory!”
“Mr. Cory from Tacoma, okay. Mr. Cory, do you have any loose objects upon your person—anything you’d be willing to let me hold for a minute or two? I’ve got a touch of what some people call ‘clairsentience,’ which means that sometimes I can pick up information by touching objects. Or call it psychometry, if you like that better. It’s a fiddly, silly, inconsistent superpower, but I’m doing my best to develop it. Practice makes perfect, right?”
The audience murmured agreement, and Cory from Tacoma shimmied around the tables until he made it to the foot of the stage. He was a cute young black guy, probably lured to town by a tech job. His clothes said business casual, his beanie hat said it’s getting colder, and his shoes said I was a skater boy, and I’m not ready to give it up yet. He had a great smile, big brown eyes, and a flattened penny from a novelty machine in the palm of his hand. He held out the penny, and she took it.
“Thank you, Cory. I appreciate your trust in this ridiculous performance, and I hope it will not go unrewarded. Are you familiar with how this works?” She leaned down, to better hear his answer.
“Yeah, my friend Debbie brought me. She said you’re amazing.”
“Wow. Thanks, Debbie!” She waved to a nebulous spot in the back of the room, from where a faint “woo-hoo!” had come. “And for everyone else, this is what happens next: I’m going to stand up here looking real thoughtful for a few seconds, maybe a minute, while I hold this souvenir penny from…” She squinted down at it. “The Woodland Park Zoo. Then I’ll choose a song just for Cory. If I do it right, the song will mean something to him. It might just be a line or two of lyrics, or it might be a tune that he heard with his one true love, years ago, on top of the Ferris wheel down at the pier, I don’t know. But if it’s meaningful for him, he’ll tell me. He doesn’t have to say why,” she added quickly. “Just… tell me if I’m reading him right.”
Cory gazed up at her, beaming. He was a true believer, she could see it all over his face. She hoped she wasn’t about to disappoint him.
“All right, here goes nothing,” she said softly, her voice barely registering in the mic.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her thumb gently over the penny. It was warm in her hands. The scene on one side was from the bears exhibit. On the other side, she found the logo for the zoo. It was the same kind of smooshed penny anyone could get from any turn-crank machine in any theme park, zoo, national monument, or roadside attraction. Nothing to mark it as special.
But she thought about Cory, smiling and young and feeling strong. Yes, that was it. A feeling of strength. Not just physical strength, but something else. Something survived, something overcome. Something in the pit of her stomach that said he’d had a near-miss with something dire.
A tune welled up in the back of her mind, a song she didn’t know that well. She recognized it from a few years ago but didn’t know much more than the chorus. That was okay. That’s what the scrolling karaoke lyrics were for.
“Got it,” she said. “Nik, hand me the catalog?”
It was a hefty thing, the catalog that went with the karaoke equipment. It had something like five thousand songs in it, and Matt checked for new downloads once a week, to keep it current.
“Here.” Leda tapped her finger on one song, and showed it to Niki and Matt. “This one. Cue it up.”
When the music came to life and the lyrics appeared on the big screen at the back of the room, Leda started to sing. She wasn’t the world’s greatest singer, but she could carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it; and if she wished to flatter herself, she would’ve admitted that these Castaway exercises were improving her singing, along with her weirder abilities. She didn’t struggle so hard with the highs or lows, and she was faster to nail a quick key transition.
She made it all the way through “Helena Beat” by Foster the People, then took a little bow and returned the penny to Cory—whose eyes were full of tears. His smile was wobbly but bright when he said, “Thank you, Leda Foley from Tacoma. That was lovely.”
Over the chatter of the crowd and the filler music that played in the background between songs, she asked, “Did it make sense to you? Or was I way off base?”
He put one foot up on the stage, to hear her better—and all the better for her to hear him. “It’s the bit about the poison and taking a sip but holding on tight. I finished chemotherapy this week. I have that album, and I blared it through my headphones on the bus, on the way to and from the cancer clinic in Ballard. That’s been my fight song.”
“Oh my God, congrats on the not-having-chemo anymore!”
“Thanks, it was brutal. But it’s over now, and my odds are good, and you made my night. I wanted to say that.” He offered up his hand, and she took it.
They exchanged a half squeeze, half shake, and he took his penny back to his seat.
Leda exhaled hard, relieved. The first one of the night was on target, and that boded well for the rest of the evening.
Next up was a woman with a tube of lip balm, and she got a rousing rendition of “Walk the Line.” Then came an older man with a war medal that she didn’t recognize. He got “Violet” by Hole, surprising everybody and exhausting Leda with all the Courtney Love scream-singing—but drawing a big thumbs-up from the man with the medal. After that, a strung-out-looking punk girl offered her a patch off her jacket, a white anarchy symbol on a black background. She received “It Will Come Back” by Hozier, and Leda didn’t know if that one had worked or not. The girl had left the club hastily, as soon as she got her patch back.
After that, Leda took another couple of requests, and then ceded the stage to anyone else who wanted to take a turn at the karaoke machine, but about a third of the audience left right away.